Hot zoning battle finally yields a compromise

Thursday, Feb. 22, 2001 | 11:36 a.m.

A compromise reached at a Clark County Commission meeting will likely mean a green light for a restaurant-bar planned for a rural outpost at Blue Diamond Road and Pahrump Highway.

After a long and contentious zoning board meeting, commissioners put forward a motion to amend existing highway-frontage land use rules to allow restaurants with bars at such intersections. The amendment will get a public hearing March 7 and could become effective March 21.

The outcome apparently satisfied both rural residents of the area and the developers, who had asked for an intense commercial zoning to allow a restaurant with a bar. The trouble was that commercial zoning also would have allowed hotels or other uses that would have blocked the view of Red Rock for residents and motorists.

Pacific Star Ventures plans to build a 5,000-square-foot restaurant and bar at the intersection of Blue Diamond Road and Pahrump Highway, also known as state routes 159 and 160. The proposed development would be about 2 miles outside the Red Rock National Conservation Area.

Wednesday's debate over the issue included two confrontations -- the first in the morning, when Commissioner Erin Kenny proposed holding the issue for 90 days to allow staff to do a comprehensive analysis of development near conservation areas.

She argued that the move would have delayed the probable OK of the development.

Environmentalists and residents near the affected area, however, asked that the issue come up for an immediate vote. Kenny angrily pulled back her motion to hold the issue.

Later in the day, the issue came up for a second time.

Chris Kaempfer, attorney for the developers, told commissioners that the proposed restaurant and bar would not have an adverse effect on the area, that the highway-frontage zoning was largely commercial, and that in any case the development would be far from the Red Rock scenic drive.

"We are not at the gateway to Red Rock," he said, "regardless of how people choose to portray the issue."

Opponents did choose to portray the issue in exactly those terms. Their greatest concern was that granting a C-2, general commercial, zoning would be a precedent for more intensive commercial uses throughout the rural area.

Residents, who argued that they did not mind the restaurant with liquor sales but didn't want other uses of commercial zoning, stumbled upon a solution to the 3-month-old impasse.

Commissioners Chip Maxfield and Yvonne Atkinson Gates said the way to bridge the gap between the two sides was to rewrite the highway-frontage rules so that such mixed uses would be allowed in the zoning category "within 660 feet of two state highways."

The compromise passed without dissent.